A Song For You

I can barely remember what my first thoughts were when I listened to Passenger's cover 'Losing My Religion.' It was quite different from the ambience of old songs, I usually listen to a set of songs that tug at meaning, life's meaning. Like Lana Del Rey, Jacob Banks, Nina Simone, Otis Redding, Leonard Cohen and many more. What can I say, I am an old soul. In my journals, I drafted out several essays. One thing I do is I draft by hand while I am thinking before rewriting on screen. So I went back to listen to the song. It felt like I was listening in on emotion radio and someone thinking in real time. It is still a shocker to me. The hesitation, the returning to thoughts, the fear of embarrassment, the clear uncertainty about living with longing, obsession and love broken in two. It became utterly clear how much I was losing my religion. It started out as a question, what are the things you return to? Or the people you return to?

I find it so hard to remember certain scenarios, especially with pressing questions like things. Then, when I find time to think I realise these questions are becoming necessary to ask because in the sphere of our life, It happens. We either return to things that are good for us or are not. Last month, a friend reached out. I saw the dangers of sacrificing my space and sanity to rekindle an old friendship. I have been told to not be too rigid with my boundaries, I listened and to be honest, I shouldn't have. I shouldn't have laid open the corners of my soul. The aftermath was I returned to the stability I felt but the price I paid was my peace of mind. I didn't like that. I don't see how you hurt your friend in clear pictures and you claim you never did anything wrong. These days no one wants to take responsibility, no one wants to make efforts to sustain relationships anymore. Moreover, you can always find someone better. No, you won't. You won't find the same person you lost in another person, especially if they were kind and good to you. Whatever value that person provided in your life. That routine safety, heartwarming memories and moments, conversations and whatnot, that's your religion and you can't get it back. With another person, it will just be a different experience. We often tie religion to Christianity or other denominations but the truth is, religion is routine. Made by you and I. It has nothing to do with if you believe in God or not, or if your salvation is higher than mine. It has nothing to do with if the presence of God is in your church or mine. Religion is where you safely return to, where your heart in its ache, finds its place. It can be God, it can be meditation. I mean, it can even be a person. The question still persists; what is your religion?

Before I learned myself, I learned how to build where my feet land and what my head carries. I had several religions but last month, I leaned into the idea that it might be that friend, I mean after all those years and the conversations we didn't have then were said. I don't regret showing grace to another person, but I regret not giving grace to myself first. I kept returning to the space I had healed from, the dangerous place where I had hidden and risen from. I told myself; "Don't be too hard on people, learn to live a little." I did. I live and deeply resent it when responsibilities are not taken due to hurtful actions. I could only control my actions and it meant just one thing. I do not reopen a room I have set ablaze. Those rooms do not exist in my books and when someone arrives with a belonging that was destroyed from that place, I resent it. I reject it. Because I have built and am still building a life that's utterly mine. And whatever it is which was offered to me, isn't mine. I have moved to being in a better place. While losing my religion, I forget how easy it is to give up, to stay. Wanting to be good has made us see ourselves as villains in the chapters we are writing. We are writing but someone else is holding the pen to our stories. And we have become invisible in ink, that's losing your religion. We were never meant to lose it, or fight for it. It has always been there if only we see it worthy enough to return to.

I forget how easy it is staying in a house that's burning hoping the fire goes out. That's dangerous, after putting out fires you'd realise all that's left is your burning flesh too far gone to heal or repair. There are certain decisions that cost us the entirety of our lives, because we have refused to see the damage it has on our own soul. I urge you, if you are there, please step back and focus on the revival of your soul. Don't lose your religion because you are trying to keep something else strong.

The quietness I built my life on, trained me to be a keeper but sustaining things like friendship or anything in your life requires efforts of willing parties. In one of my quiet meditations, I realized I was never meant to hold anything that has already been destroyed. So while I live in obsession, uncertainty, longing and prayers, I understand while I am conscious of my experiences and the people I invite to share that with me. I think it became very clear I had created standards and access is pretty limited and that's okay. If you feel the same then, I am delighted.

I think I understand Passenger now; that feeling of being exposed and vulnerable to someone after revealing so much of yourself can be scary. It was very clear in the song, how he was overthinking every interaction.

After a week of thinking about every conversation, I realised it wasn't me. The kind of heart I have, I shouldn't be too quick to leave it exposed. Because it remembers and it holds. I want it to mean something.

Losing my religion without losing God in all this, was a challenge, not abandoning my faith and myself. And returning to my sacredness and inner life. Religion is the building but I am the weather and when the building falls, the weather will still remain the same. It doesn't matter how many times you've lost your religion, your composure, your little spaces or little rooms, you are what matters most and you can always build again. You can return to the good places and continue where you left off. Return to yourself. I did. I learned that I might have found God in the language those spaces hold but there are several other ways to reach him when I return to myself, my place, my religion.

Now back to the question: what do I return to? What is that place, person or ritual, I always return to?

I return to God, coffee, I return to the quiet, to the chaos reaching for my thoughts. I return to art, writing, creating, building because there are still many things to learn and unlearn. To heal from. It is not linear. There are still many things I see that are heavy to carry, my heart, body and mind still open doors and pages strange to me. I return to where darkness lives and use it at will, I return to my willingness to reach for light even when it doesn't come. I return to my translations, how I move like water through shared experiences and see the world is the first crucial thing. There are many mediums and rituals to shift across and one is not enough for the depth of my mind. I return to the mornings, gentle evenings, when all I need to ease my worries is hearing my own voice, one more time. I return to people's stories which reminds me, there's more to this flesh. There is either death or aliveness and it shows all the way. I return to the body of work, I would leave myself alone but there are things to be done. I return to my haunting dreams because I need to empty myself. I return to my silences. These are the things bringing me closer to my freedom, each day. Closer to myself. There are rituals I can't return to all at once but I try to hold on to one place, one ritual, one thing, one friend or one part of myself. It keeps me afloat. I return to artists who have gone before me, music that existed before my existence. I return to God's promises to me, like a whisper waxed in my ears, scribbled on my bones. These aren't just routines, they are my religion and it is how my healing continues, from my inner life. It keeps me hidden in my sacredness.

In all you do, return to what your religion reveals. It is where your healing is. It begins when you return to it, then your body just becomes another scripture.

Until Next Time

Izogié

^{“Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers. Let me keep company always with those who say "Look!" and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.” From Devotions by Mary Oliver.}

I have had bad eyesight for as long as I can remember. Yet, as bad as it made me feel, I try not to feel too terrible. There are days when I deliberately leave my glasses at home, especially when attending familiar events, because I don't want to start a conversation with anyone. You can't initiate a conversation with someone you can see. Then, I will be by myself until someone walks up to me and comes closer than usual before I can actually see them. More often, I actually say hello before knowing who it is. I will be all smiles, acting all familiar with the whole of my heart. Very few times, I stay quiet. This makes me choose the kind of hard conversations I engage in public. I could choose to talk to you or not. This is a risk, I don't advise anyone to take.

This is the same with living. We try to have all the answers before we actually attempt to live. There is a sacred devotion to uncertainty that's worth exploring. Adulthood tested my patience in worst ways. I think I wrote in previous essays how I wanted to grow up so fast. While living through my innocent years, I envied the grown-ups who were already living life's template. I didn't know then, being the first, that I was already conditioned to grow up fast. Staying a child was the most difficult thing. So I thought. The truth is, adulthood is the most difficult. Being an adult with wonder, even more difficult because life wants to pull you in every direction. Living has also proven to be difficult. Seeing beyond the template, I realized we grew up believing we would eventually arrive at answers. One day, we would know who we are, what we are meant to do, where we belong, and whom we are meant to love.

But adulthood does not hand us a finished map. It gives us a page and asks us to keep writing. The scariest part, when we exist on the next page, we don't even know what the next line is going to be. That's what adulthood has become: being in constant conversation with someone you can't see. We are seeing now that everything that appeared to be sharp, polished, certain, colourful is actually not. It is boring. One of life's full pleasures is being able to live in the blur, not through it. When we go through the blur, we are eager to reach the destination quickly. We begin to wait for a lot of things to happen. Waiting to die, waiting for better opportunities, waiting for peace, for comfort, for love, for friendship, even waiting for a new life to make us whole. We have to know that this life's only destination is death, until you finally meet God, so why the hurry? My devotion to living reduces waiting and creates what I'm waiting for. The life I thought would come into focus arrived with more questions than answers. We need some kind of clarity when making certain decisions, really big ones, because they don't appear in confusion. In spite of living through the blur, you need to tell yourself who you are before life changes it for you. But how do we know who we are if we don't embrace the blur that has come in growth itself?

^{“God, rest in my heart and fortify me, take away my hunger for answers, let the hours play upon my body, like the hands of my beloved.” From Devotions By Mary Oliver.}

***

Lately, I have been watching myself opening up to changes. Right now, I am where I didn't think it was possible. I am doing things I truly desire, and when I opened a sliver of my soul, in all of that fear, I felt safe, cherished, valued, and loved. By the people around me and me. Even though the heaviness of living interrupts my senses, I still found ways to enjoy things as they are, experience and know people as they are. The blur had been teaching me that change doesn’t always have the answers. Staying in that uncertainty threatens you to stay open to whatever might come. Whatever you see is what it is. There will be more, but you are happy with what's there right now. Being an adult pins you into survival. Everything is never enough; we will always chase the next big thing. But what is survival when life remains obscured? Why can't we learn to love things before understanding what they are? The obscurity of the life we face is how we truly see with all sincerity. When my art began to form, I hated the city I currently live in. The drama, the chaos, the sense of urgency, the people. I am someone who thrives in quiet times, ordinary moments, the ones where I sit and take everything in, aimless walks, or even on lonely streets. Sitting by with a book in hand, choosing to be a bystander in every conversation, being either fascinated or disgusted. Or in rare cases, sitting in deep thoughts and arriving at a conclusion, or embracing the uncertainty. Now you see, the city became the clearest example of everything I was afraid of: a place where nothing announced itself before arriving. There's too much noise. Too much going on. It serves joy and tragedy on the same plate; pick your poison. If you choose joy, you ignore the tragedy. Sometimes, you don't choose it. It just comes.

You could step out and find a tragedy you were not prepared to witness. A body by the roadside. A person caught in violence. A stranger’s cruelty. A moment that reminds you how fragile being alive is… You could be beaten, stolen from, worse, kidnapped, or killed. You become a witness to these things or a victim. The only home I trust is the confines of my own room, yet the uncertainty of everything becomes interesting. Knowing that I can live and choose not to be quiet about these things sends a rush to my veins. It keeps the little hope in me burning. ‘Maybe there's something here, after all.’ I live knowing I can't stay in the fear of meeting my end in a city that's always pulsing in chaos. Still, I see the unsayable, listen to what it tells me, and act accordingly. Because I cannot engage with everything that beats. I enjoy the moments of passing before it feels like home. My eyes collect these experiences, keep them, think about them, translate them even before I understand them. Either as they are or as I perceive. There are things we never fully know; I don't know why my mom chooses urgency over slowness, perhaps time and seasons mean something different to her. I wonder if she loves wholeheartedly with expectations. Or why my father stares at nothing, draws a story from it, and passes it down. I never truly understood how he carried family history deep inside him until we become stories that are passed down. I never truly know why I love the people I love. I haven't yet understood how we choose one person, wanting the person all the same, despite the flaws. I still don't know how—being a work in progress—I have become whole in the eyes of the one who chose me as his. How we stare at ourselves and love every part of us wholly and tell ourselves, ‘nothing is broken here’ These are the devotions of living in a blur. This intimacy is accepting the mysteries instead of eliminating them. To know is to love, but learning to love things as they are, incomplete, raw, untamed, difficult. That's where understanding grows, complexities become reachable. That's how we hold each other, spaces, and our little sacredness.

I am allowing myself to experience new ways of love, before I know what it means, loving the blur all the same. I am allowing myself to listen before trying to understand, smell the coffee before feeling the taste. Embracing silent nights before working. Enjoying little routine conversations before thinking if I like audio calls or video calls. Allowing the book to change me before thinking of finishing it. Reliving past seasons and making sense of them months or years later. Attending church while carrying unanswered questions, praying even when I struggle with the medium, sending photos to your favorite person while holding out hope. Dancing alone in my room, strengthening my forms through writing, growing from always ‘NO’ to 'I will try’. These small acts of everyday devotion are forms of faith towards life. The deeper task for me is learning how to love a life that remains partly obscured, to find beauty in what cannot yet be named, and devotion in what cannot yet be seen clearly.

Until Next Time

Izogié

I have always carried a weight in my chest. Something that has been impossible to ignore. Moving my body has always been a hard chore, when I was still learning myself. Tales of myself felt like a sour taste, something I couldn't translate into words. Then, I knew the feeling all too deeply; Longing, devotion, othering, sacredness. I didn't know how I did it then but those things lasted longer between the spaces of each door. Something else began to form, it was a wonder. My body broke and repaired itself in a swift dance of movement. There is always this chill settling in my lower back, when my body translates a sound into longing, another swift step into sacredness. What I loved the most was my body deep in a bold surrender. Like anything could hit me afterwards and I could face it. This translation is how I placed words, where pictures had formed, where brushes and ink had met, where noise distorts into sound. It is satisfying knowing I could beat my body out of dying by deeply surrendering to a sound. Whether external or internal. In that moment, my body becomes a whisper, needing one song to make a form and I trust myself with the rest. The assured working of what I could be, if only I could inject a song in my blood.

Early on, I walked around with a boom box in my chest. I participated in mini dance steps in school. I felt cringe half the time, laughed at and mocked, half the time. But in the streaming heat on my skin, I felt alive. The only excitement, that changed the course of my own fluidity. At that moment, I became water. Always flowing, with swayed hips and dancing fingers. There is a way movement translates the emotions into your blood and in that moment, you are not yourself. You are something else, the other. Something higher than yourself, your legs beat the drums of prayer. Your breath starts whispering firm devotions to yourself, like you are beginning to trust yourself entirely with the intricate details of you. Just as writing has become spiritual for me, so is dance. The weird part of all of these is that I am not the party type. I don't thrive in those scenes, even when I own the night with the silence of a stranger breathing down my neck. Never will I speak of those nights, when wildness was a way to expel myself into nothingness. Making movement a ritual in the dark of my room, had taught me one thing; you cannot run away from yourself when you become one in the dark. You cannot expel yourself to death, when you can find new ways to become you again.

I slowly break and heal myself all at once, only I have the power to do that.

The first time I felt the communion between my body and spirit was in a club. Or so I thought. My body moved like a sacred prayer that had ached to surrender. Fighting my way through the noise, the excitement in my bones was from lightness, after devoting my movement to another body. It was terrifying and a different kind of surrender, one I wasn't used to at the time. I remembered it wasn't the first time. I didn't know what dancing could do for me, back then in school. In the early hours of the morning after a long night reading, I dance on a lonely road between my faculty buildings. Yeah, it became a thing for a whole week. I did other bizarre things; like walking barefoot home, capturing my shadows because my own appearance scared me at the time. Standing on the bridge for long hours, watching the traffic and busy lights. Staring at the moon too long, you can actually feel the dull colours on your face. I recognized the spaces at which cry and laughter occurred. In dance, silence is nurtured, and it doesn't bury you. In fact, every step translates an emotion you don't understand, something, far off, where tears have become a by-product. Like the tingling sensation in your fingers, translates longing, the relieved tension in your shoulders translates burden. Another step, translates surrender, another, devotion. And another, another, another.

When you move like a prayer, your body knows before the self catches up. Some emotions don't need explanations but preservation. The silence between your ears, when even sounds fade, doesn't need translation but nurturing. Notice the desire in your hesitation, the fear in your stiffness, the loosened freedom on your legs and thighs. This discipline sets you in a trance where music is memory, which surfaces when your mind needs a bend again. When language fails, that communion between your body and spirit is a form of worship too. A form of surrendering to a huge part of you, you are yet to understand.

Whenever you are carrying weight, shrinking, adjusting the pace of your becoming, anticipating shifting in a new form, know that movement isn't seduction, it is accommodation. You can either disassociate or come together, disappear into the air or command it to move with you. You can explain your emotions or allow your language to fall into silence and trust your body and the music to speak for you. It is absolutely freeing.

Our bodies are often treated as shameful, unreliable, excessive, vulnerable and temporary. What if the body is capable of prayer? What if it speaks how you should heal and care for yourself? How to be gentle with yourself? What if it's obsessed with your growth as much as you are obsessed with it? What if it can be disciplined? What if it surrenders to your truth too? What if it is capable of returning?

You see, through movement our bodies can be devoted to memory. When I hear Doin Time by Lana Del Rey or Refuge by Elisé Luna or This is What Makes Us Girls also by Lana Del Rey, my body remembers before my mind. I embody the memory the song carries even before I can picture it. The body stores memory differently than the mind and movement—dance— and music is a way to access those memories physically before intellectually. When a song comes on, you don't feel archived, you allow everything. Grief resurfaces, a younger self returns, your feet remembers, your chest tightens. There's a flow down your spine that allows you to remember moments tied to a particular song. There are some songs my body trusts more than my mind does. For example, after a heavy loss, my body remembers someone more vividly than my mind. I remember the rhythm they moved with, the energy they carried, the songs they loved, the way I was being held by them; good or bad. I feel nostalgic.

It tells me one thing; you can block your mind from remembering but the body does not forget. It survives by rehearsing you back into existence.

Repetitive movement for me, creates meaning. When I sway unconsciously (mostly), dancing alone at night in the swell of the dark, returning to familiar songs. My body becomes devotional, not because I'm good at it but because my body returns to me. There's something intimate about the way I take back ownership from whatever it is that is consuming me at the moment. So you ask, why dance? Why movement?

For me, movement itself is sacred. It stabilizes my emotion, reorganizes my grief. It gives meaning to what I feel, and shapes my loneliness. Restores my self continuity. It is a revival even when I collapse into myself.

It has been a long time since I stepped outside myself, watched my body move through spaces I never imagined I could reach. I didn't think I could stretch my legs far to a place that's not home. I don't like it but one can adapt to new things, you don't have to always like it. At this moment, my brain had clicked pause, a way for my body and mind to engage in something else. I wish I had control over it sometimes; to think and bend at will. I wanted the simulation to stop for weeks, thinking, writing, craving solitude, avoiding conversations and triggers, observing and drawing patterns. It was a lot.

Right now, I miss home. I miss my dad. I spoke to him today and he could sense my excitement when I talked about food. I hope he didn't notice the underlying meaning of that excitement. It was real but there was a different side to that coin. I wanted him to feel or know, he made the right decision sending us here. Well, he always said if any of us were to be in danger, he'd know. Did he notice I have already stepped into my oblivion? That counts as danger, right? He doesn't know. He might not get it, so it's best I add that to the numerous secrets of myself I have been keeping. My mind folds into itself, like an inverted shirt clinging to skin.

Since I arrived here, I have been thinking about oblivion and what it means. It is the void, that was when I was still very young. I defined it as that. Indeed, Toni Morrison did say; ‘Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.’ Now it is different. I have become the definer and the defined. I had this conversation about understanding oblivion but when I replay this conversation, I keep asking. Why understand the consequences of your madness? Why sit with your darkness? There is no point. I wanted to explain to my dad today about erasure, how slowly I have been searching for memories of me inside myself. Sometimes, I ask myself who do I talk to about these pressing questions? Will I ever get answers to them? Let me try—quietly—to explain what oblivion has become. Fear and denial and curiosity. Only this time, I fear curiosity which has developed my mind over time. The void used to be so distant and heavier to carry but now it is present and lighter. I talk to my mom and our shades of differences become glaring, my spirit just departs. I go somewhere else, while still standing. Or sitting. But our conversations are always so brief; when it isn't, the walls are about to fall down. A few times, I have taken back my words to stop those walls from falling. I sit for as long as my mind lets me and I disappear afterwards.

It is a good thing. As much as my presence is felt, my absence should mean something to me too. I have met fear again, but it's one of the few things of being human. I am meeting fear in words that aren't even my own, sometimes I let it decide what I meet next. This time I met my absence and as much as fear denial and curiosity has amplified, it can also mean rest, absence, silence. I am not one to be scared of these things, I could always switch into any place that demands my presence. Now, being here demands my absence. My absence from seeing a lot of things, always playing out the outcome before making a move. More often, acting before thinking it through. When I complained to God—at least I can still talk to him— he said one thing; pull back your words. It will mean more. As usual I didn't understand it until now, while moving through the dread. It began to make sense. We are drawn to the intimacy of endings.

Faces I don't recall anymore, forgotten conversations and childhood versions of me that no longer exist, matter too. This slow erosion of memory doesn't necessarily mean erasure. For a long time, oblivion has no longer meant void. It is rest, release from expectations(there's still a little part of me that expects understanding) a place where knowing can not follow. In here, fear exists, denial might be the trigger even, curiosity may be a dry ground at first, even draught but it won't always be like this. I am allowing my absences to mean much as I have allowed my silences, presence, my brilliance as opposed to the limiting reason I am being faced with. The normalcy which will always be strange to me. I think my mind is finally ready to expand its logic, I have been engaging myself with chess, relearning it. I became scared to unlock a new level to this madness. It was why I stopped before. But engaging in something else that is different from my routine, helps me fight the oblivion. Since I have left home, seeing my absence has made me welcome and appreciate it.

We fight oblivion because we want to be remembered. We are scared of being forgotten, I am too. Instead of fighting it with legacy, art, love maybe softening into it every once in a while might help. Or delaying it. I'm not sure if delaying would help but I would love to know too.

Maybe I am delaying erasure or disappearance. Or maybe I just like it here. This rest isn't comfortable but it has accepted me. My absence isn't erased, it is saying more than my presence ever could. Since I cannot escape oblivion, perhaps I can learn to meet it without fear.

If you see me here again, know I am learning to be present again. Then I might let you deeper into my thoughts. For now, allow me to find the chaos of my own mind.

Thank you.

The last time I wrote to you, I was just trying to extend a hug from another place. A place you never knew existed but it does. In your mind, time is just a river. You sit by the clock, waiting for something to change because of fear. I hate that fear of life has taken root inside you, I love you for breaking that pattern, I love how you've turned everything bound against you as a tool to build you. The last time I wrote to you, I didn't predict this. As time heals, it is not all knowing. It will move but you will continue to move too. Right? Promise me.

I had a lot to say last year but during this time, I just repackaged the same thing I have said because it is still valid till this day.

Remember, everything that has tried to kill your spirit has failed. And you are here. In the flesh. With all that occurred last year, I didn't think you'd make it. It was…too much for one person. So nobody blamed you for not saying as you should, anyone would crumble in deafening silence if that much pain takes hold. No matter how strong they think they are.

You are proof that a body could also be water and God's delight. You have demanded more just as a lot has been taken. Through your eyes, I saw the burdens of your soul. How you carefully flip the pages of Corinthians and one stuck with you the most; To Die Daily. The series of chances that phrase had given you, you ignited your love for living. I see the wonder lit up in your eyes as you drop the weight of the previous day and make something better. Making the self better than it was. You can't experience joy with the baggage of yesterday, not even the ones tomorrow will offer. Take each day as it comes, nobody is a better seamstress as you. You are tired, one foot in front of the other. Your bones fall off, stack them back together. You lost your voice(assuming) teach yourself to speak again. Learn to love the sound of your voice; you are a crucial person to be.

You see, just because I have told you to move doesn't mean you aren't allowed to grieve. It is what makes the act worthwhile. If you must die daily, it is okay to grieve what has died. Although you sat at the clock for many years, I hope you know, you won't become time itself. You won't be able to control it. One good secret I would tell you is that; no one has a time frame. Least of all you. Just be discerning enough to know the right time to do things.

I see your soul, I see its burdens. Use it. I know your heart; I wrote your name with its tears; guard it. It will be easier to carry. I know your fears; you won't end up in the way you are thinking. Embrace it. If you run from that fear, you'd end up being the person you detest most. It's difficult to let go at times please do, we need your mind for crucial matters. Even God is with me on this one. Hold your words and plant it where it's needed.

These seven days and nights are the most important days; listen and remember. That's why you chased photographs, to remember. It is why you are your truest self on a page, because you want to remember. It is why you created safe spaces, opened bigger doors, your silences are indeed golden. Remember that you are alive. Pinch yourself. Come here if you must, if you have forgotten. I hope to not disappear as I push you forward. We've not even begun to scratch the surface of your becoming.

Remember; Death doesn't want you, God got you. Remember you are here and that is enough. Remember the eyes that truly see you, understand you and love you. Nothing else matters. Remember something tried to kill your spirit in the past and has failed. It will fail again as many times as it tries. God's voice and yours and the other should be the loudest in your head. A part of your old life will fade as you crawl into your new one. You realise now, you haven't prayed for far too long but you have. The door left open to your words is prayer itself.

As the windows to your old life are closing, remember it doesn't have to be a new you, you are already there. Nurture the fundamental parts of yourself. There's nothing wrong with being continuous. The bored parts of you are worth paying attention to too.

Remember to hold yourself as tightly as you can, make yourself known as often as you can. Don't hide and don't lose your smile walking through that door.

Seven days left to your old life, allow the numbered days be what it is and live as boldly as you can.

I am going to be doing something I haven't done before. A collaboration with a very very good friend. He is one of the very few writers whose work I quietly adore. He is not just the owner of the publication Ink&Altar, he has embodied the publication so well, it is more than a daily newsletter. It is prayer, art, thoughts, conversations, lessons, reality and the human condition all in one lighthouse. He is a thinker and strategist, not just a writer but an artist as well. It was in one of our many conversations, we realised what Writing means to the both of us. Different message and thought processes, same story. We also had to consider what writing may mean to other writers or creative people in general, who are still finding their feet in this lighthouse we have seemed to embody so well.

He answered the call just as I have and he has a lot to say. Not just that, he kept something in there for you too

So stay close.

I wrote a piece on it too. Act 1. You might want to read that first before reading this second piece. Read Act 1 here

Enjoy!

Act Two- Written by Jacques

Writing As A Second Sight

Writing has never for me been about putting pretty words on a page for people to ooh and ahh about. It was about naming emotions too abstract or terrifying to explore. It was answering questions I didn’t realize I had the answers to. And mostly it was my way of sorting through the cacophony of this thing called life.

As a 16-year-old boy trying to confront the demons in my head with poetry, I learned what it was to go to war. To fight to meet yourself, I knew what it meant to cry over pages and feel pain and relief in one breath. I learned to use writing as a sword to slay my demons, a compass to guide me to the broken pieces of myself, and eventually as air on which my cries could be given sound.

For me, writing was salvation, and it still is, but it was also a friend, the one who forced me to seek the truth, who led me by the hand, who wrapped me in a hug when the emotions threatened to choke me. Writing was the friend who helped me survive until I was able to thrive.

I have often wondered how I made this friend. I can’t recall a single moment where I said hello. I don’t even know where we met; all I can recall is that writing followed me home and never left.

At 20, writing was no longer survival; it was community, it was in the people who would read and relate to my internal chaos, it was knowing I wasn’t alone, it was in telling me I was worthy of love. Writing became my extroverted friend who introduced me at every gathering, who spoke when I stood rooted and unable to say a word. Writing still filleted my skin to show these people who I was underneath, but from writing, I felt what it was to love.

At 22, writing was love. It was in caramel skin and honey brown eyes, writing was a muse, with the sweetest laughter and praying lips, writing became flesh to me, it filleted me, took my heart, and presented it as an offering. Writing sat me down and told me it was okay to be happy

At 23, writing and I had a fight, in passion I forgot my friend, and so writing became a journey, I realized quickly I never had writing’s address. I got lost, I ached, and one day at my wits’ end, I saw writing sitting there, waiting for me to notice it never left; it was always there. Writing told me it had a source, right inside of me; it said it was in the fabric of all things. I thought it was a lie, but writing took me by the hand and showed me the Word that gave all things life. Writing was a Word, and that word was God

At 24, writing was a road, a pathway to the divine, one on which I could come and go, but writing taught me to stay, to sit still and enjoy the way, to listen to all the journey had to say

At 25, writing took everything from me and became sight; it allowed me to peer into the divine and the divine to peer through me. Writing made me more than a writer; writing made me a priest, a custodian of messages from the divine. A conduit from which the supernatural could speak to a mortal man.

I do not know what writing will give me or become at 26, but I feel it forming, I feel it morphing into something more, and I await with folded hands. I do not know what I will be. But I know I will be what I must.

Now writing is still a filleting of self, every time I write, I bleed on a page. Yet doesn’t all access to the supernatural come with a price? One, I believe all creatives pay. To have a universe in your mind, one must learn the language through which the universe speaks to them. And the world would think you mad, because they do not understand that for you the world is painted in a language so bright, it’s an eternal war of light in the dark.

For me, the universe speaks in writing, in music, in art; for you, it might be different,

For me, writing is second sight, a connection between the creator of the universe and I. Like David wrote poetry and songs as psalms that prophesied the coming of God, John wrote revelations as a writer, Noah built the world’s first ship from divine specifications, and Moses received the commandments as writing. I could go on, but God has always communicated with man through art,

And as an artist, your art is and always has been a way of connecting to the spiritual, to find the good or the bad, and give it expression as you choose to be used.

As a creative, you have only one job: Open your eyes and see!

***

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Until next time.

At our old house, we were so high up that I could see the crooked road leading to church. Still, the sheer near presence of God, didn't give me the safety I craved. It was the sound that threatened my eyes to open. The quiet soft sound of Islamic chants. Five am every morning, the devotion to that same sound even when I couldn't place the words between the melody. I didn't know if a mosque was nearby, I didn't know how true that was. Till this day I couldn't confirm it. I lived in that silence tailored for me, at the break of dawn I could feel soft and quiet moments, that taught me presence. I sat at the dusty suede chair, lying in wait by the window. I couldn't see anything, just shadow and smoke and a red light at the telecommunication tower. That was all I had. All I heard. In 2022, I went to live with my friend. We had a creative hangout in Lagos. It was my second time in Lagos, nothing about the city thrilled me then but when we would wake, I heard that same sound. This time the voice drew nearer, closer to my thoughts as it is imprinted in my mind. My friend hated it but I love it. It wasn't just my alarm, it was a reminder to pause in betweenand choose the day before chaos chose for me.

That singular sound I heard, threw me into a loop of consistent sharing. I opened myself that night to the possibility of soft moments. I peeled off the scale from my eyes, that allowed me to take notice of these moments, not just searching for them but creating them for myself. Each time I am greeted by the harsh tone of chaos, I wake before the world wakes, relieving myself from past sins and the weight of too much reaction. When the world finally wakes, it seem i don't understand the makings of it. On a very hot day, I stood at the edge of the crowd and a busy road, I watched the blaring of cars both fighting through the narrow lane. I was particularly having a bad day quite early, so I wasn't prepared to face the life happening to me that day. I sighed. Someone walked up to me, asking if I was okay as she quietly tucked her phone away. I nodded, I don't like strangers, the sheer idea of talking to someone I do not know makes me shift in fear. Not because they will hurt me but I don't know what to say to them. When I said I was okay, she proceeded in assuming I was finding it difficult to cross the busy road. This stranger gestured for me to follow her. When we parted ways all she did was smile, saying I will be fine.

My heart skipped a beat. She doesn't know me from anywhere but in that chaos she had created a soft moment for me. After then, I see these moments of peace that I can create for myself. A home in the midst of all the chaos. Every morning, I sit still, just me and my thoughts. The darkness was enough to fill me as I stared into the void. All the busyness of the previous day comes to a halt. Like, how I stay close to myself in the morning. The silence is enough to choose what the day would be like for me. I didn't think I could bring all the madness growling inside my head to a halt. But for a while, I have been able to build a home in everything, to bring myself to my center.

At the break of dawn, after a few consecutive nights staring into the blanks, trying to find your voice in the void. Your body would demand something from you and if the stillness isn't enough to pause, the chaos will breed inside you like a second brain, glued to yours. Then, there would not be a way to return to yourself. I created a home long before the break of dawn and since then, I didn't look back.

Home is in everything. If you look closely. It's in the soft moment you create for yourself. Home is in the coffee I drink just to stay awake. It is a space for little routines because I'm scared of what I might find when I sleep. Sometimes I find it in a tiny taste of that food, which I have been longing to eat. Home is the colour that refuses to be just colours, they have that signature touch to everything you feel and make them homely. Home is in the clouds, the moon, the setting sun, the stars(even if I'm not a fan, but they are included, for their cute tiny selves) Home is the night that slipped through brief hours, home is time that keeps visiting when I need a rewind and a rush of good thoughts. Home is not the black noise that vibrates from my mind, it is when euphoria takes a new form then the quiet hours of the morning comes. Home is in the feeling before the fear, the uncertainty, the anger that refuses to surface.

Home is the arms that accepts me bare, without gates to protect that which echoes to be free. Home is the voice that replaces Nowhere by Black Match, the strength behind the song Maybe by Birdy, the sinking feeling of Trampoline by Zayn, the unknown haven of Love in the dark by Adele, the denial of Asphyxia by Alexdy, the sickly sweet truth of The lonely by Dwin the stoic, the horror of Saint or Sinner by Ignis brothers.

Home is the confession of Braveheart by Ignis brothers. The confession, I'm made to face. Home is in the songs I still love and refuse to listen to, songs I no longer love and the ones I'm fighting to love. Home is here, also a place in nowhere. It is in brief happiness, crawling joy and stifling laughter. Home is my silence before words find their way to me.

I remember forgetting. Trying so hard to hold on to the shards of my imagination… one thing that undid me was I didn't know if I was gaslighting myself into believing things that weren't there or maybe things weren't actually there. I sift through my notes, holding tight my fist as I hit my head trying to paint a picture I had lived before. “What's wrong with me?” I ask. “Why I can't I remember?” I thundered. I picked a pen and tore out a sheet, and started writing. The shaping of my words were the bricks, I needed to rebuild myself again.

I think I wrote in one of my notes that I had stacked my bones back into my body each time I face a small death or regeneration. Each time I met myself, I had to mould back into myself and it is never the same. I am almost like a new being. Almost…Scars were evidence that something happened here.

Something broken was fixed. Sincerely, I was never fixed. I just wore a new skin on top of the old one. I didn't have to wait to decay into dust before the waiting to be reborn. I was too fast. Too hasty to move past the pain, I lingered for too long until I became a whisper in the crowd. My shouting voice reduced into void. My eyes fold into itself as I waited for something to happen. A pinch, a grace, a jolt. Something to remind me that, I, a human being with an elastic ball for a mind was alive. Then I learned something; a quick fix, an electric noise isn't going to mold you from your shattering. You can't stop your demise. You have to face it. Sometimes, you have to stay in your ruin to be alive again.

*

In the year 2021, a wave of pain hit from giving too much of myself to something I thought would last. A structure I was building. You know, sweet words are good but when supported by actions it makes all the difference. It was in that pain, I met God. Every part of myself had a scroll to read to me about who I was and who I was about to become. I didn't listen. My mind began to unfold but I wasn't moving. I stayed where I was. I left myself alone to sulk. In that same place, I understood that; silence is God's language. When I embraced my spirituality, I thought that was it. I am finally fine. Until the year's ending, I began to forget. I couldn't remember, the pain of my childhood, the glitter and light I held firm in those formative to years. What's worse, I couldn't remember conversations of a week prior, months. The only thing I had, was family and a few friends who held me, who are still holding me till today.

Fear was like mud that kept wrapping me in stains, even when I didn't even walk to it, it came to me. When I didn't listen to it, it spoke to me. When I didn't see it scribbled it's letter on me like a stigma I tried to get rid off. Was this the end of me? What was I possibly going through that everyone else hadn't been through before? Questions became mantras, those mantras became prayers. Prayers turned to pleas. I was going through what I called small deaths, the part I was not ready for was finally prepared and I had to let go of whatever skin was glued to mine, I had to peel it off. When I didn't, it went off by it self. There are some seasons that would rip you off from your existence but if you don't have a core identity of who you are, you may never wake up. You may never meet you.

Meeting me, was the greatest thanksgiving I had ever had.

Your truths are what's going to hold you on some days. After losing fragments of myself back then, something similar tore me open through grief. I started pulling spaces that weren't mine and I forgot what my voice sounded like. My body started hinting on a foreign language. I panicked. I told my friend Dee, my body doesn't know itself anymore. It doesn't know before touch, aloneness, silence and solitude. Dee said to me on the other side of the phone; I expected you to crash more than this though. That's how strong you are. As for your body doing what it's not supposed to do, teach it. Teach it how to be you again.

That was everything I needed. In building , your body will forget you. Your mind will attack you but let it. You will be thankful for it.

See, I found a medium and began to build again. Still learning the language of my voice. I had to force myself to listen.

So if you are like me who is building from scratch, a project, a life, a career or brand. Or you are out there building a new you? Before you panic, listen. Listen to everything and anything. Whatever you have gathered that's yours, would stick to your body like glue. Stay in your ruin, long enough to be alive again.

Things I am Enjoying At The Moment

Podcasts. I have been replacing that with music. It's not easy but I do have it's seasons.

Building. I was going through my drafts and saw what I have created and I came to the realization that apart from being a maker, thinker, I love building something. It's teaching me Patience.

Writing. It's been damn, long since I wrote something. That's because it's been long since I sat with my thoughts. I thought I had nothing to share but damn, there's a lot to say.

Photography. Well, maybe I will elaborate on this next time. The lessons it's teaching me. (Why do I feel like I said this the last time?)

Anyways talk to me! What's been going on with you? Are you in a new season? Let me know your take away from today's piece.

P.S: Writing is more of a calling for me. I have been learning what my space looks like and thinking is free ease again. This is just a tiny update to let you know new mail entries would be Fridays. So every Sunday and Friday, expect a mail.”

Until next time.

I thought something was going to change last year. The celebratory feeling, the quake of laughter, little meets and greets. I thought the hugs were going to make me feel safe. At least I trusted my body to remember what happiness felt like while staying in it because it wasn't an all pleasant year. It was just the same. The anxiety, the emptiness after drowning your heart down your rib cage, I thought I would be able to get used to the feeling of helplessness. Then the agony got to me faster than anything else. Throughout last year, I saw myself locked in boxes. Memory boxes. It felt safe, staying in hibernation as the world moved in cracks. I stayed locked away in my head for as long as fear tremored inside me like a second heart beat. It felt good to pause, to watch, to not get involved . I became nothing more than a motion blur, still in the picture but not being able to get attached to anything. I was simply floating. I wasn't sure where.

In the wake of last year, I experienced nights where I had to pinch myself to check if I was still breathing under my skin, if the air between my lungs were still warm. After months of exhaustion and hibernation, I still blink away the suffering my eyes had seen and store them at the hunch of its back. After the echo of grief, my body felt like a burning house without an actual fire. Just me and the shadows I have been, the stories that had kept me sane. I travelled far into my mind, staying in memories of what I used to know. What felt familiar. I remember tuning in to the radio, with "Jolene by Dolly Parton" playing. I heard my father's instructions to let it be, while we sat in silence enjoying the sounds. I loved that we could sit in silence without having to fill it. He taught me that. There are some conversations that need not be words, just the whispering body of his child, sitting next to him was enough. I was happy there, right there. I leaned in closer into myself and saw, I was ten. I was decades far back. That scene was a memory. A memory I kept going back to. I beat myself up to tears but that didn't stop me, I kept going back there, because silence was what I knew. Being able to trust that my words were safer between my ribcage, that I could quietly keep swallowing them when it crept up my throat. I would just tell myself; “it's just another breath. Nothing to panic about.”
Soon, the scene didn't feel scary anymore after a few more visits and it became my second home.
Going into a memory where I remember myself more wasn't the problem but what drove me there was more scary. Exhaustion. It became a second language in the previous year, one I didn't like.

When I chose another medium to explore my creative sight, I didn't think I had to give up a lot. I like to think I have my time to breathe better (writing). It is the only way I knew how to. I have always known I wanted a creative career, I knew this journey was for me and it was a quiet one, one where I have to show up for. Still, I wanted to at least know what being a visual artist had in store for me. What it meant for me. Yeah, it had a lot. But still, I felt sick to the stomach not being able to detangle the thoughts in my head.

Going to work everyday seemed like a usual routine, one I wasn't built for but I was running, running from grief that I thought I had expelled from my bones. Running from confronting myself through every dread I felt. After experiencing the death of a loved one, the wrenching feeling of heartbreak. I read my poetry notes and saw for myself how my body was trying to expel me from those spaces I was feeling numb in. Spaces where I was disappearing into a memory. I knew letting go was what’s best, I was grateful for it. Elated. But it didn't stop my heart from hurting. I thought if I had just good memories of the person I lost and not let the guilt of not showing up when she was alive eat me up it would help. It still didn't fill the emptiness. Showing up to learn photography was exciting for me. Finally! But I wish the first few months I stayed enough with my discomfort, so I had strength and faith that my body could carry me through the madness of the world, of that routine. I wish I had strength to support my head in carrying me through the judgement of not doing enough, of not being enough. Yeah, I heard that a lot all the way through my training. Working with others was hard, different mindsets, characters that might push you to the edge or trigger you. Doing that, while finally learning to sit with my body again, my thoughts and not run or break was a lot. In all this, a blank page was still scary, I didn't know what to do with it but that didn't mean my thoughts didn't exist. But beginning again? Made all the difference.

A few things I picked up on my way, throughout my stay in hibernation and taking a step on a different road, is that what you let others believe and who you truly are, are entirely different. What matters is what you truly believe. I had to remind myself daily that I was somebody before I started learning photography and I am an even better person, no one can make me feel less of myself or how far I have come. While working with other people in that field, I was made to believe too much brilliance or in unfiltered words, "too much book no good." I was made to believe being smart was entirely something I did wrong as a woman. Thankfully for a brilliant friend who forced me out, not to hide my intelligence for whatsoever reason. Let people know who you are. They don't have to like or agree with it but let your value make your presence known. Now, just because someone or something triggered you in any way, doesn't mean you can't learn from that scenario or that person. Yes, I was a bit out of place in my training but I knew why I was there and I focused on it.

Moving forward, I know the kind of environment I would want to explore or stay in. I learned to heal the spaces in my body, the step I took on a different road wasn't to erase the journey I have been on but to strengthen myself while still on the journey itself. Sometimes, the path less travelled isn't linear.

After all the exhaustion, fear, grief, emptiness. I did not arrive this year the same. I arrived unevenly and I stopped apologizing for it. Now, I know arrival isn't a moment; It is body remembering. With an unevenness around the edges, I am grateful for my head carrying me into unknown directions and also to let me know that it is time to seek even bigger opportunities. I am happy for the side of me that had taken into the glimpse of the world. I know there's more.

Things To Note.

•Happy new year! This reflection in my own dialogue was long overdue. I am enjoying a lot of things at the moment but I am focused on staying rooted in the life I have now and the one I want. Also staying rooted in and out of my body without distractions. You will be hearing a lot from me. After a year of hibernation and void, it turns out I have seen a lot and I have a lot to say.

•Just know The Uneven would be a bi-weekly newsletter...

•Yeah, I changed this space. When I chose "The Cacophony Of Sermons" I knew the name was temporary because I am water. I am always going to flow and grow. "The Uneven" is just right. Like a quiet presence or room to slow down. Everyone has uneven edges and this is just my own journey of uncovering them in a way we all feel seen.

Until next time.